CelticCowpokes

Biking to Scramble Mt. Fullerton

On Tuesday this week, I headed out to the Kananaskis area to scramble Mt. Fullerton.  Mt. Fullerton is located to the northwest of Nihahi Ridge, in the Elbow Valley area of Kananaskis.  After reading another scrambler's post on the trip, I decided to try biking to the mountain, in the hope of shortening the trip a bit.  I ended up biking about 95% of the way and experienced some of the best biking that I've done in Kananaskis.  To get there, I followed the Nihahi Creek trail off the Elbow Loop -- which is about an hour and a half ride.  The trail was excellent and mostly single track with a few rooted sections through the wooded area immediately after turning north from the Elbow Loop trail.  Once you descend from the woods, I really enjoyed the travel along the creek bed (especially on the slight downhill grade on the return trip).  I found that if sticking to the east side of the creek closest to Nihahi Ridge, there's a distinguishable track for great biking. 

I arrived at the mountain, dumped my biking gear and decided to head up the drainage toward the ridge ascent.  The drainage was interesting, mostly clambering up rocks -- at least until I encountered the snow.  I noticed that a recent weekend-long rainfall in Calgary had accumulated a significant amount of snow in this area of the mountains.  While heading up the drainage, I kept to the forest slope as much of the snow was knee deep.  And stupidly, I forgot my gaiters at home, so I was eager to keep my feet dry as much as I could.  This was eventually a futile effort :) . Attaining the ridge was fairly straight forward, however on the ridge is where I encountered a bit more difficulty. 

Naturally, the higher I went, the more the snow had accumulated among the rocks that lined the  ridge ascent.  I kept to the drainage side of the ridge, hoping to escape the real deep snow and holes among the rocks, but it was a slippy affair in the ankle to knee deep melting snow.  Eventually and with alot of kick stepping, I reached the top of the ridge and managed to scramble to about 25m before the summit block.  I stopped here as the snow was waist deep and the summit looked too treacherous for my liking with all the snow.  I probably would have had a good challenge without snow, but it was a bit out of reach at the moment.  So, after eating my lunch and taking a few panorama pictures of the summit (great view of Calgary and the foothills from there), I made the slow and slippy descent back to my bike.  This time I took the woods, which was fairly steep, but sparse with snow and trees.  The final section is mossy and thick woods, but a few game trails allow for easy passage.  Given the snow conditions, I was glad I took the relatively straight forward drainage ascent.

Arriving at my bike, well, I was surprised a bit.  I found that most of my biking stuff was still there, but I was missing my biking gloves!  I looked around for them, but noticed that my shoes had been disturbed by someone or something.  I figured some squirrel or magpie had taken the gloves for bedding -- as I just couldn't see someone biking 6-8kms on a not so well traveled trail from Elbow Loop to take my gloves.  So after a few good laughs and reciting some favorite arguments and rants along the way, I headed back to the car glove-less! 

It was about an 8k trip to the mountain, with a round trip time of 6 hrs. I posted a few more photos on flickr.

Winter biking in Calgary

The past week and a bit have been pretty cold out in here in the prairies, we've been averaging temperatures of -15, even bottomed out at -32 last night.  For the most part though, it hasn't stopped me from biking to work at least three days a week.  Sheena took this photo of me, taking off on the coldest day I've biked so far, -23 C.  It wasn't too bad getting to work, but really I started to realize the cold at about 13 of 15 kms.  Thankfully, you stay warm for most of the trip, but nearing the end, the sweat freezes and things get a bit chilly.  Nevertheless, with some good and warm biking gear (including Nana's knitted wool socks, my favorite), it's still good exercise!  When it's snowy on the roads, I take the old mountain bike seen here.  After it's cleared up (usually from a Chinook), I break out the road bike again.

Here's a sample of what I've found works for the cold and dark winter riding:
ski goggles, lycra balaclava, waterproof breathable pants, long johns, reflective bike shoe covers, two pairs of mitts (shell and inner), breathable tee shirt, fleece under jacket, gortex shell, and few neat flashing LED lights.  Thankfully, most of the stuff I also use for hiking, which makes it easier.  Still cheaper than taking the car though!

I really do wish the city would build biking paths that cross the north part of the city from west to east.  Currently, most of the biking paths are focused on downtown -- where the typical commute takes place I guess.  I don't mind the weather, but the traffic on northern roads does get the best of me sometimes. 

The other Sentinel Pass

This weekend, Sheena and I embarked on a fun adventure...this time with company, couple of friends of ours, Dean and Laura.  All of us headed out to the very bottom of Kananaskis Country, in an effort to avoid crowds and snow and to do a little biking and hiking.  The area we headed to is south of Highwood, within the Cataract Creek area...even more south than we had been last year.  The area is usually clear of snow earlier than the rest of the mountain areas and as we had discovered last year as well, is quite warm.  This time, well, we found what we were looking for -- no people -- but the conditions were still a bit on the snowy side. 

The way there is not without its adventure.  Because the roads to south Kananaskis are closed due to weather and animal protection between Dec 15 and May 15th and/or June 15th, other routes are necessary to get to areas which we find are really off the beaten path.  Our little map shows how we travelled -- which during the summer would have been simply south on Hwy 40.  Anyway, this was not the best part of it.  Basically, from Hwy 22, we headed into the mountains via a forestry trunk road, the type of which we wrote about in other adventures.  Think of a road like the Cabot trail, but minus paving and guardrails.  Oh, and also add rockslides, debris, texas gates and animals.  It certainly was a chance for us to test out the Matrix 4wd (although I really yearned for a disposable rally car) and it was a lot of fun. We also realized that the road was being widened, perhaps due to an expansion of the more travelled areas of K-Country.  So, after about a half hour drive from the main road (which was 1 1/2 hrs from Calgary) and some scenic views on the dirt road, we arrived at the trail-head.  Funny how hiking books sometimes neglect important information.

We suited up for our bike trip and realized the trail was going to be a fair bit muddy.  The trip continued north along a utility road which was made eerie by the low fog and cloud cover.  We were grateful for our bling (bells) and the occasional shout to 'Boady' (Dean and Laura's dog) to stay on the trail...and warding off the possible bear of course.  For about 2 hours, we climbed steadily along road and trail leading toward the meadows before Sentinel Pass.  It was here where we dumped our bikes for hiking shoes and headed up the gentle slope to Sentinel Peak's sister mountain. Before going, we had hoped to ascend Sentinel Peak, but after arriving in the area, realized that snow accumulation might make going a bit longer than we hoped.  The ridge line leading to Sentinel Peak had fairly large snow cornices high above the trail, making any travel slightly dangerous as well. (I even noticed a few snow slides as we were ascending the opposite hill.)

We hiked the rock and grassy hills to reach the top, taking quite a few photos.  [Side note: Recently, through a friend, I came across an excellent program for making panorama photos out of normal (but numerous) photos.  Having tried a few samplers at home, I was eager to capture this view entirely.  The program worked nicely and really shows what type of scenery we were facing.  Check out the photo here.] Sentinel Peak is the high point in the far right of the panorama photo.  It was quite a sight after a muddy trail ride to the area.

The ride home was awesome.  We rode through mud, accumulating it on our bikes like crazy and well, on most of our clothes.  It took us just 35 mins to cover a 2 hour uphill ride, with a few pit stops of course.  The ride home was a bit less clothed than usual (mental note: to protect car interiors, bring a few extra pairs of either blankets or pants).  We began the drive home and discovered a great store in Longview.  A dedicated beef jerky shop! We bought some samples -- and I'm surprised to say, it was quite a bit better than Chris Brothers beef jerky.  Run by an easterner, I guess they ship across the country. 

 

Drumheller: Biking, cacti and desert!

Last Sunday, Sheena and I made a day trip to Drumheller, which is about 130kms northeast of Calgary.  Drumheller is a very unique place in Alberta, with grand canyon type landscape, cut into the prairie.  The canyons and rock formations are so unique, they almost look unreal.  Drumheller has also a desert type climate and terrain, full of cacti, dry caked mud and other grasses unique to the area.  It is a world reknown hot bed for fossils and palaeontology and home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum.  We had outdoor activity in mind, so we weren't able to stop at the museum on this trip.  However, from what we saw, it is HUGE and nestled within the canyon formations just outside of Drumheller.

So, with biking in mind -- I had seen some neat mountain biking trails on a few tv programs and wanted to check them out.  After a short visit to the info centre in Drumheller, we headed to Horsethief Canyon, a spot for hikers, bikers and the like.  To our surprise, we barely saw any people at the canyon when we arrived and throughout the day.  Occasionally, you'd see some people hiking in the distance, but for the most part, Sheena and I explored the canyon enclaves on our own.  There  were certainly lots of birds, gophers and cacti!  I've never seen any in Canada before, so that was quite a treat.

We spend a few hours exploring the canyon walls, prairie floor and a few other treats along the way.  Near the end of our day, we decided to cool off and find some shade near the Red Deer River bank.  We waded for a while in the water, enjoying cooling off from the day's hot sun.   After lunch and resting up, we made our trek back to the car, which involved a fair bit of hiking up some steep slopes.  Nevertheless, it was a fun day..and a good break from the big city.

Biking in Calgary

Well, I decided to bike to work for the first time on Monday. I was working outside the downtown core in the Northwest today...and Sheena was working, so taking the bike was a good change from the train.

Biking in Calgary is great. For those that don't know, Calgary has dedicated bike paths that are scattered throughout the city. These paths are well designed and constructed in a way that they avoid contact with traffic. This means that paths are built beside roads, underneath bridges and intersections, overtop roads, etc. It's an excellent system.

Basically, the way the paths are arranged, you can either park your car at a designated car park and ride about 5-7km to downtown, or for those leaving downtown like me, it's pretty much clear sailing to your destination with map in hand. I say pretty much clear sailing because if you're unfamiliar with the city, it's probably wise to do a little trial run the day before. (I learned the hard way, biked an extra 8k on the way to work the first time.) The trails are well maintained and usually clear of snow. As you bike farther from downtown, there are a few places cleared year-round, others just from the traffic. Interestingly, you can also bring your bike on the C-Train (Calgary's rail transport) and a few buses have bike racks as well. There are a few restrictions on time of day for the train, but otherwise, it's good to go.

Here's a few pics of the bike paths and one where the river encroached a bit on the path.